Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides Party Size Discussion

Fuck, the custom "hack" to play with a party of six doesn't work anymore and gives a 100% repeatable crash now with the new patch.

Hopefully, we will get an updated version soon. I'm still downloading the update from GoG (6+ hours later I am at 46%). Do you know if you can at least still multiplay with yourself?

Hiya Larian Devs. I get why you may want to limit your party sizes to 4 in Act 1.......as if it was any larger you'd then probably be able to have every single major character in your party *all* the time. I was wondering, though, if you might consider expanding the party size to 6 in the later acts......so we might be able to take in additional major characters when we adventure? Anyway, just a thought.

Concidering so-far Larian official statemens answers would be: No ... and No.

Ain’t gonna happen...just cost too much with the amount of work going into the game

Like people said above right now the official answer seems to be no but I don't think it is a big deal since there are ways to increase party size on your own

The thing is though, the backing for "No" doesn't feel that strong to me. I recognize there is an argument to be made for it, but I genuinely think 6 is the best amount, and doesn't even cost resources, or at least more than they'd already do with all the other permutations of this game. That, and it does not stop anyone from playing with 4 or 3 or 1 person, but doesn't make mods the solution to one of the most talked about issues.

I don't understand your last sentence. If this is the final choice, mods are not only a solution, they are the only solution.

About Larian being vague I agree, it's not great. And I think that if they definitively said that 4 is the max people will be able to move on (maybe not cheerfully, but move on nonetheless

I am more saying I don't want the final decision to be "No," and that the closest to pleasing everyone is increasing the party size, which also eliminates the need for people to mod in that desired party size of 5 or 6.

I am a big NO on this for the actual game but obviously people can mod whatever they like. Between on the temp party members and familiars/companions I think its a lot to manage.

I doubt it will happen. First of all, current companions aren’t all companions there are to be so 6 slots won’t cover all available companions anyway.

Having bigger party would also most likely mean 6 party coop, which is something Larian might now want to tackle.

It is still unknown with wide selection of companions will stay available fortune majority of the game, or if BG3 will follow D:OS2 formula and force you to pick 3 permanent companions after ACT1.

Personally, I don't think it's a lot to manage so I have a hard time seeing it from there, but I'm a weirdo who managed every companion in BG1 so yeah.
But like I'm not asking to force it on people who hate it, I'm asking to make it an option, somewhere in gameplay settings. So people who don't want it don't have to engage with it, and those who do want it are not forced to mod. I want a game to be good before mods, and making this an option is something I feel would make the game many times better.



I still despise the DOS2 route. So I seriously seriously hope not. I get this is more personal taste, but that way of treating companions feels forced and wholly unsatisfying.
Also 6 characters doesn't necessarily mean 6 players. 2 people can control an extra character, or if three players everyone has 2 characters. But like I don't think 6 player co-op could hurt this game, and in fact would make it more accessible I feel.

To be fair, its not a deal-breaker for me if the answer remains a definite "no"......but it would be nice to have 6 people in the party later in the game, when the difficulty starts to ramp up. That said, I managed to get through Solasta with only 4 Party members.......

Definitely not a deal breaker, but it REALLY would hamper my enjoyment of the game significantly. It's a big thing to me.
However, handling a larger cast of companions DOS2-style is very much a deal breaker for me. Especially with companions having set classes, and that way of handling companions going completely against how I play games.

Whats the point anyways?? Already WAY too few playable NPCs. If it where 15+ like in BG2 then yea 6 is great. But we are getting...6 or 7 NPCs, from which half I dislike...so yea. lol

I seriously hope some time during this EA we won't need a hack for a 6 person party. In my latest playthrough I have found multiple moments where I just felt like two more people should be there, not cause fights are hard but because it feels like the party is incomplete almost.

I hope that someone will find easier way to allow us 6 members ...
I dont like that "hack" thing even a little bit. :-/

I don't know if I would go as far as to say deal breaker, but I agree it's the worst thing they can do. At least the worst I can think of

I'm sure the full game will have an easy to install mod

Eh, tell me about it.
I'd like nothing more than being able to just have it as a readily available option rather than having to download a specific software to manually edit a specific file in a very specific and unintuitive way.

Not to mention that it doesn't work anymore, as my previous post pointed.

Also, something I pointed just on Discord some time ago and that could turn out to be a problem even for modders: in my last playthrough (patch 4) done with the party expanded to six when I got at the end of EA (the final travel/ optional fight on the boat while navigating to Moon-something Tower) I realized that two of my characters died automatically because the game was HARD-CODED to allow only 4 characters on that boat.
I hope the final game won't have much of this bullshit to navigate your way around or it could turn into a proper minefield for modders trying to fix what Larian refuses to fix.